Drum tower reopened

The Drum Tower (Gu Lou) re-opened to the public on Monday after being closed for 2 months.
The popular tourist spot was sealed after a knife-wielding stranger attacked two American tourists and their guide on the second day of the Olympics. One of the tourists, Todd Bachman - the father-in-law of the US Olympic volleyball coach, was killed in the attack and his wife was seriously injured. The 47-year-old attacker, Tang Yongming, jumped to his death after the stabbing.

Security at the site has been strengthened: an extra five security guards have been employed taking the total number of guards to 15, the tower’s balustrades have been raised and visitors are now searched when they enter the grounds.
At present, tourists are restricted to certain areas and are not allowed to freely wander the tower as they were in the past.





The Drum Tower
Daily 9am-5pm.
RMB 20, students RMB 10.

New traffic rules and extended services

New traffic regulations that will see up to 800,000 cars taken off Beijing’s road every working day, come efective from October 13 . All cars with license plates ending with either a 1 or 6 are not permitted to be driven within the Fifth Ring Road between 6am to 9pm on Mondays.

Monday 1 + 6 taken off road
Tuesday 2 + 7
Wednesday 3 + 8
Thursday 4 + 9
Friday 5 + 0

For the first month of implementation drivers caught taking their vehicles to the road on restricted days will get off with a verbal warning. After this initial period, those caught flaunting the ban will be fined RMB 100. However, no points will be deducted from the driver’s license.

Extended Subway Hours and more Buses
In order to support the new car restriction measures, the Beijing Subway Company has announced that they will extend the operating hours of the city’s subway lines. The city’s transport bureau will increase the number of buses on Beijing’s streets by 10% to 18,000 vehicles. The bureau has also announced that 10 of the 34 Olympic bus lines will be retained indefinitely and that these services will now operate from 6am daily. They’ve also increased the number of evening services by 3 lines so that there are now 15 lines operating overnight. They’ve also extended the operating hours of other bus lines.

Varied Office and Business Hours
The office hours of various unspecified industries and work units scattered across the city have been staggered to start at 8.30, 9 and 9.30am to help relieve peak hour traffic congestion. The office hours of national government bodies, Beijing government offices and schools remain the same.
Business hours of most of Beijing’s large department stores have been set as 10am-10pm. Most stores we’re already operating on this time frame but some department stores have been forced to push back the time they open by half and hour. The traffic bureau will announce the measures a week before the start of every month.

Let us hope that all these efforts can help bring down the polution again to the same (or lower) level as during the Olympics. Because soon the "heating-season" starts and all the powerplants in and around Beijing will start spreading their smoke over the city.

Nei Mongol - a rich part of China

Most of ShiZhitings family live in Nei Mongol and since her fathers youngest brothers son got married just before the holiday we took the oportunity to visit their hometown Wuhai.

This is a small and "quiet" town with just 450 000 people, in the middle of the coal- and metal district in Inner Mongolia.

Before this was a poor part of China but now with all the coal, minerals and metals found in the hills and mountains it is one of the richest provinces in China.
You see coalmines everywhere and I never have seen so many trucks on the road before - all loaded (overloaded) with coal. Since the load was not so well covered a lot of coaldust is coming from the trucks and the ground beside the roads is totally black of the dust.


















Before not too long this will be a great environmental problem together with all the power plants burning coal. You see the chimneys everywhere and can smell the coal. This is another example to how short time economy will destroy for the future. Nobody is today thinking about this - just quick make money and get out.....(of the country with the money...)

National Holiday

Sorry for not updating during a long time but have been quite busy.
Two weeks ago we had National Holiday in China and many people travelled across China - it is a small logistic miracle every year whel several million Chinese go by bus, train and airplane on the same days....

A lot of people from other parts of China visit Beijing during this holiday. This is the way it can look at Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City during one of the peak days.

8,2 million people visited Beijing major tourist sites during the week and later 38,75 tons rubbish was swept up from Tiananmen Square (last year 80 tons).
Also the Great Wall was crowded with people.




















In Badaling, 396 000 people climbed over each other.

According to the Beijing News, Beijing ate RMB 115 million worth of food, a 53.6% increase on last year.
Beijing parks saw almost 3 million visitors over the seven-day break. The Summer Palace (Yiheyuan) proved the most popular with 443,900 visitors. The Altar of Heavan (Tiantan) attracted 353,300, Beihai Park 229,700 and Fragrant Hills (Xiangshan) about 200,000.

So, a good advice from friends was NOT to stay in Beijing over the holiday. We did not - we went to Inner Mongolia....